The Culture of Corruption is STILL Alive and Well in Montgomery County: Foley Deal Done Behind Closed Doors

There it is.

Nearly three years after a state raid.
Thousands of pages of hidden evidence.
A withdrawn pleas, with zero “manifest injustice.”
A sealed docket.
A collapsing indictment.
And a judge who bent the law like it was overcooked spaghetti.

This morning, in a Montgomery County courtroom, Visiting Judge Jonathan Hein handed Mike Foley the ending that the political machine had always engineered:

Felony counts dismissed.
Misdemeanor plea.
No removal from office.
No trial.
No public exposure.
No justice.

And Hein even acknowledged it in plain English:

“Everyone in the room knows what you did, you clearly shouldn’t do.”

Yes.
Everyone knows.

And yet — instead of accountability, Foley got:

• $2,000 in fines
• Court costs
• 24 months community supervision
• A suspended jail sentence he’ll never serve
• 40 hours of community service
• “Ethics training”

The trial scheduled for this week is now cancelled.
The public will never see the unreadable 2,600 pages of evidence, will never hear the testimony so damning that the docket had to be sealed.
The case is officially dead.

Hein, RIon and the “prosecutor” still have their law licenses, despite engineering an illegal deal the first time- and broke 200 years of precedent on what counts for “manifest injustice” in a 15 minute hearing.

This is not justice.
This is the machine protecting itself in broad daylight.

I told you they would do this.
And they did.

Stay tuned. More to come as they release the formal judgment entry.

And because quo warranto is still treated like an insiders-only tool, a remedy only available to the people inside the tent, the public is forced to take this sitting down, hands and feet bound, mouths and eyes taped shut.

And while this circus played out, Foley continued breaking the law, hiring Debbie Lieberman right after she voted to fund his job, and using his press hack Dan Edwards to send out the “murder threat press release” on the county dime.

There is no justice in this state unless the Supreme Court decides to hear my appeal and rule that yes, Ohio is still a state governed by a Constitution and laws. not by the political whims of the Montgomery County cartel.

In the immortal words of Dan Edwards from his press release: “You can’t make this crazy stuff up.”

UPDATE: Here’s the filed plea deal.

UPDATE: Analysis of the plea deal

After the original post went up, the court released the final termination entry in the Foley case. It confirms everything that has been wrong with this prosecution from the start. The document is not a legal conclusion. It reads like a political settlement.

The judge states that the court was willing to accept two misdemeanors without a Bill of Information simply because the attorneys agreed to it. This should not happen in any courtroom. A felony indictment was filed by a grand jury and the court brushed it aside to accommodate a negotiated outcome that kept Foley in office.

The entry then dismisses the original felony related counts at the request of the State. These were the charges that triggered Foley’s removal the first time. The dismissal avoided that constitutional requirement and cleared the way for a plea that protected him from consequences.

The last page contains the most stunning sentence. The court writes:

Further, the Court journalizes the agreement between the parties that there shall be no further prosecution of the Defendant for facts arising out of this investigation. that there shall be no further prosecution for any facts arising out of this investigation.

A county judge does not have the authority to grant this kind of immunity. It attempts to shut the door on any additional criminal review by future prosecutors, auditors or investigators. It attempts to bury the case permanently.

Nothing in this entry restores public trust. Everything in this entry makes it worse.

This document does not resolve a corruption case. It closes ranks around the defendant and the lawyers and officials who steered the process. It protects them, not the public. It also reinforces exactly why my Supreme Court appeal matters. The appeal is no longer about one officeholder. It is about whether a local court can rewrite the consequences of public corruption and make constitutional requirements optional.

Until someone outside Montgomery County steps in, this case is not an example of justice. It is the blueprint for how to avoid it.